A Quote by Janet Fish

I feel as though I haven't seen an object until I actually start painting it. — © Janet Fish
I feel as though I haven't seen an object until I actually start painting it.

Quote Author

Janet Fish
Born: May 18, 1938
Usually my starting point is something that I've seen. It might be a painting, it might be an object. But they always start from a definite sensory experience.
I've always seen process of crafting as part of the thinking process. It really forms the gestation of the work. I'll get an idea; I want to express this idea, sometimes I'll start it, but during the process of making the object - if it's an object or a painting - it changes. It never goes in a linear progression from A to Zed. It's always this kind of circuitous, stumbling, groping in the dark kind of process of evolving.
I don't mean to give performance art a bad name or anything; I think there are people that are legit. I think I just got frustrated painting - I love painting; I actually tried to be an artist, but it's sensitive, and then you have an object. And what do you do with that object? And then repeat and repeat, blah blah blah.
You don't know if the actors are going to have chemistry until you actually start filming. They can get along, they can be friends for years, they can be hilarious as people, but you don't know if it'll actually work until the cameras start rolling.
Our experience of any painting is always the latest line in a long conversation we've been having with painting. There's no way of looking at art as though you hadn't seen art before.
You have bits of canvas that are unpainted and you have these thick stretcher bars. So you see that a painting is an object; that it's not a window into something - you're not looking at a landscape, you're not looking at a portrait, but you're looking at a painting. It's basically: A painting is a painting is a painting. And it's what Frank Stella said famously: What you see is what you see.
I think people don't want be alone. Ultimately, we want to feel connected. We want to feel like there is someone who actually sees us in the world. That's the big thing: to be seen. How many people actually feel seen?
To love a painting is to feel that this presence is ... not an object but a voice.
Painting is seen as picture making, the making of an art object, something that can stand on its own.
Here, reality is not subordinated to painting, indeed painting seems the handmaid of reality, though we feel it tending towards a procedure which, while not at the mercy of appearances, is not yet in conflict with them.
It has been said that a Scotchman has not seen the world until he has seen Edinburgh; and I think that I may say that an American has not seen the United States until he has seen Mardi Gras in New Orleans.
Many people told me such convincing ghost stories that I felt that there really were ghosts, though I hadn't seen any. And though I still haven't seen a ghost, I feel that they are all around us; we are just not aware of them being there.
An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object.
To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude. (The sight of it as an object stimulates the use of it as an object.) Nakedness reveals itself. Nudity is placed on display. To be naked is to be without disguises.
I haven't seen 'The Exorcist,' but I've seen a lot of pictures of the girl in it. So now I don't actually want to see it. She scares me so much. I don't know what it is, but even though it's quite old now, it still has the best and scariest make-up I've ever seen in my life.
Start early – the sooner you start, the more you will have in your account when you retire. I actually waited until 30 before contributing…that was a big mistake.
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